


Man's Best Friend

by Embracingtheplotbunnies



Series: Dany and Jon (Tumblr fics) [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire, game of thrones
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, F/M, Mostly Fluff, Romance, a tiny bit of angst, from my tumblr, modern day AU, puppy ghost, the great ao3 migration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-30 02:15:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12644085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Embracingtheplotbunnies/pseuds/Embracingtheplotbunnies
Summary: Modern Au. In which Jon didn't mean to hit that dog, he doesn't need another dry cleaning bill, and the worst night of his life just keeps getting shittier. He really doesn't need the volunteer at the pet shelter judging him either. But the universe doesn't seem to be his biggest fan at the moment...





	Man's Best Friend

**Author's Note:**

> From my tumblr because I'm trying to put everything up on here for all of you. This is from back in August-the night of 7.03, actually. 
> 
> Modern AU, fluff. Not a whole lot to say here. Enjoy! 
> 
> Also look me up on tumblr @blue-roses-in-a-wall-of-ice because I'm always writing new Jonerys oneshots and I always take prompts!

He’s wearing the wrong outfit for an injured dog to bleed out on. 

The last thing he needs is another dry cleaning bill. It couldn’t have been any other day. Nope. The dog just had to jump in front of his car while he was on the way home from his sister’s wedding, still in his good tux, still reeling from the breakup and the look in his (now ex) girlfriend’s eyes when she said they were finished. Luckily the impact didn’t kill the dog (really, it’s more like a puppy if he’s being honest) but its paw is bloodied and he thinks he can see some bone sticking out. 

The situation is kind of bad. 

The dog doesn’t protest when Jon picks it up, trying to keep the pressure off of its bad foot as much as possible. Instead, it seems to be doing its best to cuddle into his side, looking up at him with bright blue eyes. It’s a cute dog; maybe a Samoyed, all white and fluffy and smaller than it should be. It’s also skinny; its ribs are poking out like it hasn’t had a good meal in days and the remains of a collar are around its neck but the edges are fraying so badly it’s a wonder they haven’t torn entirely. 

Jon can’t just leave him there. He’s not a horrible person. So he sets course for the nearest animal shelter, whispering for the dog to just hold on until they get there and texting Sansa to let her know he’ll be late. Not that he was really planning to come back to the reception anyway, but old habits die hard. 

By the time he gets to the shelter he’s sure he’ll need another dry cleaning bill-and the dog hasn’t barked once. He’s not sure what to make of that; it certainly makes things much less complicated but the dog seems too tired to do much of anything anymore, especially run away. He’s starting to get nervous. It can't die now. He already feels bad enough already. 

Wouldn’t that just be the whipped cream and cherry on top of an already shit day? The ring burns a hole in his pocket and he’s tempted to throw it into the gutter rather than face the humiliation of taking it back to the diamond store and asking for a refund. 

Compared to the darkness outside, the light of the animal shelter seems almost blinding. He squints for a minute until his eyes readjust. It’s late and the room is empty, apart from a few dogs and cats sleeping lazily in their various kennels. A ceiling fan chugs lazily overhead and the whole place smells vaguely of lavender. A young woman with light blonde hair is sitting behind a small metal desk, humming something as she does a crossword puzzle. “Can I help you?” Her tone is almost distracted as she marks down another answer; she doesn’t even look up from her puzzle. 

“Um, yes. I…accidentally ran into a dog and I think its foot may be broken.” Yup, it doesn’t sound good out loud.

She practically throws aside her book, eyeing him with no small amount of shock. “You ran into a dog?”

“By accident.” With a car. Fuck. 

“Oh my God!” She practically vaults over the desk and takes the dog from him, not seeming to care that she’s getting blood all over her white blouse. “He’s bleeding!”

“Is he going to be okay?” Stupid question. 

She doesn’t say anything-she just gestures vaguely to a chair and runs through a door into a back room, dog in hand. He follows her, though he knows it wasn’t a summons. For some reason, he can’t leave the stupid dog alone until he knows that it will be okay. 

The woman has set the puppy on what looks like a small steel operating table and has her phone to her ear, talking nervously while she flits around the room and grabs various salves, gauzes, and bandages. She hangs up with a small “thank you” and kneels down in front of the dog, whispering something he can’t make out as she gently rubs under its chin and feeds it a treat. Its tail wags limply, tiredly. It’s really not looking good. 

“Need any help?”

She shrieks and almost drops her scalpel. “What are you doing in here?”

“I don’t know I was just-”

“I just called the emergency vet-she’ll be here in ten minutes. She said it’s never busy after ten at night.” She shoots Jon a dirty look, like it’s somehow his fault. “While I’m getting everything ready, why don’t you tell me how you accidentally hit a dog and broke his leg?”

It’s obvious she thinks he’s a horrible person who shouldn’t be trusted around small animals or children. “I was just…driving, I guess-”

“You hit him in your car?” 

He sighed. “Look, I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention like I probably should have been. It’s just…been a long night, and I really don’t want to top it off by killing an animal.”

She doesn’t say anything for a moment, examining the dog and rubbing behind his ears. “Well, you’re lucky. It could have been a lot worse. And you brought him in right away-you wouldn’t believe how many people hit animals and then drive away like it never happened.”

“That’s awful.” 

She abruptly sticks out a hand for him to shake. “Daenerys Targaryen.” 

“Jon Snow. Nice to meet you.”

She nods once, almost curtly. “I only wish it had been under better circumstances.” She turns away from him, piling all of her hair (and she has a lot of it) up on top of her head and securing it with a handful of hairpins. “So the vet says that we need to keep him calm until she arrives.” She scratches behind the dog’s ears again. “He’s remarkably well behaved.”

“He didn’t make any noise on the way here.” He clears his throat. “Does he have a chip or any tags?”

She shakes her head. “See how his fur is matted?” He hadn’t, but now that she points it out of course he can. “He’s been abandoned for a while. Judging from the way he wasn’t afraid of you he’s lived with humans before. We can see if we can find his family-but we don’t always have the best luck with it.” His heart twists painfully for this dog that he barely knows, all alone and missing his family. 

Not too different from someone else he knows. 

Once they’ve wrapped up the dog’s leg as best they can, given him part of a setative crushed up in bits of a hot dog, and oufitted him with a bowl of water the silence between them grows heavy and awkward. It’s as if he can feel the judgment radiating off of her in waves.

“Fancy occasion?” She gestures to his suit, which is now rumpled and looks like it got dragged through a hedge backwards. 

“Yes. My sister’s wedding actually.”

“Oh. Well, that’s lovely.”

“We’re all very happy for her.” 

“It’s barely 11:30. I didn’t know it was even legal to leave a wedding that early. You don’t even look drunk.”

“I’m not.” He might have taken a shot or two but he didn’t feel it; the anxiety in anticipation of the proposal had burned it all off. “It’s…complicated.” When she doesn’t say anything, he finds himself continuing. “My girlfriend and I had a fight and I didn’t really feel like I should stick around.”

“I’m sorry.” 

“It is what it is. It just would have been nice if she’d told me she was unhappy before I spent three grand on the ring.”

“That serious, huh?” He nods, not really wanting to talk about it. “I don’t have good luck when it comes to love either. The last boyfriend I had…our relationship didn’t end well.”

“I’m sorry.” 

She looks like she wants to say something else but just then the door bursts open and the emergency vet walks in. She looks to be in her mid fifties, with dark hair just beginning to show the faintest of grey at the roots, and steely dark eyes. “Hello, Dany.” Dany. He files it away for future knowledge. Her eyes flit over him noncommittally. “And…?”

“Jon Snow. He found the dog.”

“No name?”

“No name, no tags, no chip-nothing.” 

“Pity-he’s a sweet dog. He must have made some family very happy.” She shakes hands with Jon. “Doctor Whent, at your service.” She examines the dog carefully, taking special care when she reaches his injured paw. “Poor thing. He’s prepared for the procedure?” Dany nodded. “Good. Then I’ll send you both out now.”

“Will you need any help?”

“Not now, Dany. Why don’t you show Jon to a place to sit-and maybe point him towards a bathroom to wash off his shirt?”

She nods and Jon follows her through the swinging door back to the waiting room, glancing back one last time to see the dog looking at him with eyes full of hope. 

“He’ll be all right,” Dany says, while he sits down in one of the chairs grouped loosely around the room. “Dr. Whent is very good at what she does.” 

“Are you training to be a veterinarian yourself?”

She shakes her head. “I just love animals. I plan to spend the summer traveling and it’s nice to do something that means something to someone before I go, you know? Even if it’s just making sure animals are adopted into loving families.”

He nods because he does get it. “It must be hard to let them go.”

“Kind of-but it’s worth it to see the look on the faces of little kids when they get to go home with a cat or dog.” She smiles a little, getting an almost faraway look in her eyes. “So what are you going to do about him?”

“Do about what?”

“The dog. Obviously we’ll have to hold on to him for a couple of weeks to make sure he’s healthy and no one comes to claim him…but otherwise we’ll reach out to you first to see if you want to adopt him.”

“Oh.” It’s not that he hasn’t been thinking about adopting a pet-he just moved into a new, larger apartment and he’s always had dogs growing up, but he always just assumed that he and Ygritte would get a dog together sometime after the wedding. But now that everything’s been shaken up…maybe it’s time for a change. 

“Well, first he needs a name.” She raises an eyebrow, as if stating a silent challenge. 

“Ghost.” The name comes to him immediately-the dog is all white and seemed to appear out of the night like an apparition, all big eyes and white fur. 

She nods. “I like it.” Despite how shitty he still feels after everything that’s happened he finds himself smiling at her because maybe there are worse ways to spend the worst night of his life. 

~

Jon is back at the animal shelter two weeks later to the day to fill out the last of the paperwork that will allow him to adopt Ghost. It’s hard to hide the spring in his step-not just at the idea of getting a pet, but at the idea of getting to see Dany again. It turns out they have a lot in common, besides the obvious. 

His other sister, Arya, is with him-lugging along a college textbook that’s thicker than her arm. “What’s she like?”

“Ghost is a boy.”

She rolls her eyes. “I know that. What about the girl?”

“What girl?”

“You thought I wouldn’t notice that you were texting someone all morning?” She pretends to be hurt. “Do you really think that little of me?”

“Her name is Daenerys. But I call her Dany.”

“Pretty.” She has no idea, he thinks.

The shelter is relatively empty for a Saturday morning and Dany smiles at him from behind the counter as she leads Ghost out of his kennel. The dog is wearing a cast on his paw but his eyes are bright when he licks Jon’s hand-a blue bow hangs around his neck and matching bows accent each of his ears; apparently Dany couldn’t resist. 

Arya squeals in a way that’s extremely unbecoming of a twenty year old girl and drops to her knees, burying her face in the dog’s soft fur. “Jon, he’s so cute!”

Jon signs the last of the papers and hands them to Dany, who-surprise surprise-has moved onto another crossword puzzle. “Anything else?”

“Nope,” she says, scribbling her signature at the bottom. “Although…are you free Friday night?”

“Depends. What did you have in mind?”

She shrugs. “It’s my day off. I know a nice little hole in the wall Mexican place, if that’s your thing.”

Dammit he’s already smiling. “It sounds lovely.” And just like that they’re going on their first not-a-date. 

Arya is grinning maniacally when they get in the car. At first he thinks it’s because of Ghost, who keeps trying to climb into the trunk with all of the pet stuff they bought at the pet store the day before. And then, just before they turn out of the shelter’s parking area, she tells him “You know, looking happy suits you. I know the girls can’t resist your brooding face, but they probably just haven’t seen your smile.”

It’s his turn to roll his eyes. “We’re just friends. For God’s sake Arya, I just broke things off with Ygritte two weeks ago.”

“For now.” 

He thinks about arguing with her but ultimately decides it won’t do anyone any good so he shrugs it off and turns up the radio. Arya sings along to Taylor Swift all the way home-she won’t tell anyone, but she loves all of her songs. 

And Ghost-miracle dog that he is-tries to lick his face.


End file.
